Yasmin

I didn’t know we Britbloggers we duty bound to watch Channel Four, Chris.
I’m still recovering from Germaine’s exit from Big Brother, mind. And you haven’t written anything about that, I note.

I watched it, but I didn’t blog about it as I may well have to write a formal review in the not too distant future. But I certainly agree with Chris that it was excessively didactic – well before the end, the drama had given way to an increasingly transparent attempt at ticking as many “current issue” boxes as possible.

Mind you, it didn’t help that I’d watched Hanif Kureishi’s My Son The Fanatic a few weeks earlier – a film that dramatised similar issues but in a rather subtler way. Worryingly, despite being made several years earlier (it predates 9/11 by half a decade), Kureishi’s film reaches a similarly despairing conclusion – it ends with a Westernised Pakistan-born father and Easternised British-born son completely unable to bridge their differences (and unlike Yasmin, these differences aren’t highlighted by a single event: they’ve been simmering under the surface for years).

Incidentally, you may be interested to know that the scene you mentioned in Yasmin (whereby hijab-wearing women were abused in the street) was at least partially improvised – in that the woman who reassures them at the end was a genuine passer-by who hadn’t realised that she had inadvertently walked onto a film set. This at least conveys a rather more positive message than the conclusions being drawn by either film, though it’s not much in the way of compensation.

Have to agree that My Son the Fanatic was a great movie.

Nonetheless, it has to be recognised that the whole concept of Islamaphobia is a western concept – percieving yourself as a oppressed minority and coining a term for it is very much a western idea.

Ken Loach’s Ae Fond Kiss traverses some of this territory but for more domestic reasons. Manages to be both gentle and challenging at the same time.

Last, promise… I loved the bit when she is in the pub and her workmate tries and “explain” why people at work are harassing her after 9/11 and she goes, oh so you want to hear sorry, ok I’m sorry, I didn’t do it, but I’m sorry!

The scene itself was a bit too stretched but the sentiment, ah, it just needed saying. Not that it’s ever going to get through some thick skulls who love the idea of collective responsibility only when it’s about other people, but it was great to watch.

I think the point was that Japanese leaders had no interest in encouraging a feeling of mistreatment as they didnt want to “circle the wagons” because, as you point out there was no where for them to go but to integrate.

The WW 2 Japanese-Americans, unlike the Muslim community (so far) were *imprisoned* and really could do nothing about it. Some committed suicide, others volunteered for (segregated) U S military units to prove themselves patriotic Americans. Most just sat it out and returned home after the war to find their property and livelihoods in the hands of whites. Survivors from this period who I know, though thoroughly Americanized, still consider themselves “Japanese.”

Perhaps every society needs an internal group of ‘evemies of the people’ of some kind. The group may be defined by religion, ethnicity, class, ideology, etc.

Soon it’ll be the old people – blood-sucking leeches on the most productive elements of our society. Yeah, that’s right. The old dirty bastards will refuse to make a living by bagging groceries and just won’t die before having a couple of expensive liver transplants. That’ll be a shame, a millstone ’round the necks of our youth. Something will have to be done about it, eventually.

unremitting hostility to a community will not lead them to abandon their most reactionary traditions in favour of modernity but will rather have the opposite effect

Apart from current hostility fertilizing the more reactionary elements, there can also be a radicalization of nascent political movements. Opressive governments (Egypt, Pakistan), the Gulf States’ monarchies, etc. don’t allow avenues for political grievances to be addressed. This pushes legitimate political movements underground, leads to the consideration of more extreme methods, and creates a population susceptible to nationalists, fundamentalists, demogoguery, etc.

Western governments had a direct/indirect hand in establishing and supporting these opressive regimes. (Egypt, Pakistan, Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Iran). The neo-cons and Osama’s ilk both agree that something’s gotta be done about the Middle East. Both want to do away with opressive monarchs and dictators in the Middle East. Strange.

“But the basic message: that unremitting hostility to a community will not lead them to abandon their most reactionary traditions in favour of modernity but will rather have the opposite effect, is a valid one.”

1) Hostility in what sense? Obviously abusing people in the street (or anywhere else) is not useful or kind or acceptable or any way to change people’s minds. But is that the only kind of thing that is meant by hostility? Does hostility include for instance criticism?

3) Community in what sense? There are a lot of communities in the world. Granted that abuse in the street is not an ethical approach, should all communities be immune from all forms of ‘unremitting hostility’? Even if ‘unremitting hostility’ includes merely criticism?

3) What follows from the argument? That no community should be abused? Or that no community should be subject to criticism or disagreement?

And before anyone accuses me of trying to score points: these are real questions. I don’t know the answers to them. I really am unsure what is meant by ‘community’ and ‘unremitting hostility’ in that sentence.

Ophelia, I criticised the film for its excessive didacticism. I know you haven’t seen it, but if you do, your criticism will be either that it was didactic in the wrong way or not didactic enough. Michael, in comments above, said that one had a sense that boxes were being ticked as the film wore on. Thanks for providing the Ophelia Benson checklist against which such films (or novels or whatever) can be evaluated in future:

Did artistic production [enter title here] make clear that “communities” are not monolithic? — *check!*

Did artistic production [enter title here] explain that criticism of religious believers is legitimate? — *check!*

etc.

I want that checklist applied to Bruckerheimer productions!

psst, Chris, it’s Archie Panjabi, not Punjabi :)

X, I don’t think the answers are obvious. I’m not sure where (if anywhere) the line is being drawn, between abuse and criticism. I’m not playing fake-stupid; I really don’t know.

If I were a betting man, I’d say it’s because people aren’t in the habit of pushing flaming rags or excrement through the letterboxes of “poms” in Western Australia.

Seriously, Giles, you’re not really trying to pretend that there’s some equivalence between the kind of teasing that goes on between Australians and English people, and the shit that Asians put up with in the UK?

X,

Have you seen this article by Kenan Malik?

He says this –

There is clearly ignorance and fear of Islam in this country. Muslims do get harassed and attacked because of their faith. Yet I believe that the hatred and abuse of Muslims is being exaggerated to suit politicians’ needs and silence the critics of Islam.

I think the use of boilerplate homilies about ‘unremitting hostility to a community’ tends to work to silence the critics of Islam – including the critics who grew up within Islam, such as Maryam Namazie, several of whose articles I have published on the website I edit (Butterflies and Wheels) and whom Kenan mentions in his article –

Marayam Namazie is an Iranian refugee who has long campaigned for women’s rights and against Islamic repression. As a result she has been condemned as an Islamophobe, even by anti-racist organisations. “On the one hand,” she says, “you are threatened by the political Islamic movement with assassination or imprisonment or flogging. And on the other you have so-called progressive people who tell you that what you say in defence of humanity, in defence of equal rights for all, is racist. I think it’s nothing short of an outrage.”

I don’t think Chris necessarily meant it that way, but I do think that the very fact that words and phrases like ‘community’ and ‘unremitting hostility’ are open to a variety of interpretations helps to discourage criticism of Islam, even by people with an intimate insider knowledge of it.

There’s a lot of worry about the marginalization of the ‘Muslim community’ – but why is there so little worry about the marginalization of people like Maryam? And Homa Arjomand, who is leading the campaign against Sharia in Canada. They’re a minority, and a much smaller minority than ‘the Muslim community’ – but they’re ignored.

So that’s the source of my confusion.

Look Ophelia, the problem is this. Every time we have a thread on CT which is vaguely in this area you pop up making exactly the same points and insisting that the discussion conform to your agenda. As it happens, the film — which, living in Seattle, you haven’t seen — doesn’t project a view of “communities” as homogeneous, and doesn’t suggest that Islam shouldn’t be criticized. And when I wrote of “unremitting hostility” I had in mind the kind of bullying Yasmin is subjected to in the film rather than a careful feminist critique a la Nussbaum. I think that would have been obvious to most people.

Maybe I should put an explicit “Ophelia Benson” disclaimer in every post, making explicit that (1) of course “community” is a problematic word (2) “communities”, whatever they are, aren’t homogeneous, (3) there are lots of bad things about religion, (4) respect for “identity” shouldn’t be an excuse to silence justified critique …. etc etc. Or maybe you can write the disclaimer yourself (since I’m bound to have failed to formulate it exactly to your liking) and you can post it on B&W, and I can just link to it every time ….

numerous other minorities

Dan, maybe it’s also because those other minorities were immigrant communities, whereas the black Americans were not.

Dan, I really don’t know where to start….

Well, first, perhaps, to note that comparing American Blacks with the other groups you list shows either a shocking ignorance of the differences between their respective histories or , alternatively, a really gobsmacking willingness to make light of those difference. Abduction from Africa, slavery, reconstruction, lynching, segregation, … but that’s ok they were “liberated” in the 1960s. (You might want to look at comparative mortality and incarceration statistics.) And as for groups willing to take up arms: when you’ve finished reading _Soledad Brother_ you could start on _Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee_ .

On the matter at hand, you write:

might we at least agree that it’s absurd to blame anti-Muslim discrimination and harassment—of which we both obviously strongly disapprove—for the disturbingly large numbers of European Muslims from immigrant families who are joining Islamist terrorist groups?

I don’t know what the numbers are, but I suppose any number > O might count as “disturbing”. And I’ll note in passing that this was not a prominent feature either of the film or of my original post. But perhaps you can explain, Dan, why the fact that an explanatory consideration E fails to be a _sufficient_ explanation of phenomenon P entails that it is “absurd” to invoke E as a component of the explanation for P?

Ophelia – “I think the use of boilerplate homilies about ‘unremitting hostility to a community’ tends to work to silence the critics of Islam”

I feel so dumb, like, I didn’t even get that’s what you were driving at.

I read the article. Stuff I heard a million times, with a few original twists (such as “blacks are more likely targeted by police than Asians, hence the attention to racism against Asians is hiding the real racism” – hm, where did anyone say there is only “one” kind of “real” racism? Why does it have to be, one concern at the expense of the other?

Another line I find absolutely useless: “racism was much worse 20 years ago”. So? Even mysoginy and gay-bashing used to be much worse. What’s that supposed to mean, their modern manifestations are irrelevant? Or yes they’re worrying “but” being concerned about them detracts from other “real” concerns like… crime? Where have I heard that one before.

The most devious reasoning is positing that causal link between denouncing racism and “silencing critics”. Racists are *not* critics. They’re two separate categories. Anyone who doesn’t live in a mansion isolated by the world knows the difference. It’s devious and insulting to *exploit* a perfectly legitimate issue – that of cultural conflicts of mentalities and practices within said group, the same group being targeted by racists – only to somehow attribute the responsibility of “silencing the critics-from-within” to… the anti-racist people who are only “exaggerating racism”. I have heard this one before. Not just about Muslims. It seems to forget that, while no group or community or minority is monolithic, whether of immigrants or children of immigrants, you know, people coming from a different country, culture, religion than the majority (that is the obvious definition of “community” – does anyone ever question what “the Hispanic community in LA” means? does anyone seriously need to qualify that with “of course they’re not all the same”?), the existence of critics-from-within has no bearing on how racism manifests itself. Racism and bigotry and xenophobia, by definition, don’t really distinguish between the most repressive mysoginist Muslim pater familias (not that even he would “deserve” *racist abuse*, right?) and the critic-from-within, in fact, doesn’t even distinguish between Muslim and non-Muslim Asian, Arab, or foreign-looking. It’s the racists who treat all people like a monolithic bloc. That’s why they love that “Islamophobia is a myth” line. It allows them to disguise even the most right-wing tabloid tirade against immigrants as “criticism”. Like your Mr Kilroy-Silk. They provoke reactions exactly to be able to say, see, “they” can’t even take some purely democratic bashing. They’re all the same.

Then, as if the existence of Islamophobia was not evident enough from cultural and political manifestations of it, figures – official figures only, ie. only reported incidents – are brought up only to be dismissed in rather patronising ways. 344 incidents of racial harassment in one single year after 9/11? no big deal, they were only about spitting and insulting, like, shit that happens if you’re a foreigner or dark-skinned looking, you know, and didn’t escalate into riots (that was the “real racism” era, 20 years ago…).

The heavy-handed policing – again, figures are only reported cases – is similarly dismissed. With that added distasteful hierarchy of “real” racism (against blacks) vs. “exagerated” racism agianst Asian Muslims.

There is one valid point:

bq. For Muslim leaders, inflating the threat to their communities helps consolidate their power base. For government ministers, making a song and dance about police harassment allows them to appear both tough on terrorism and sensitive to Muslim needs.

But it’s totally ruined by what follows:

bq. But it does the rest of us, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, no favours at all. The more the threat of Islamophobia is exaggerated, the more ordinary Muslims believe that they are under constant attack. It helps create a siege mentality, it stokes up anger and resentment, and it makes Muslims more inward looking and more open to religious extremism.

What creates resentment is not a “perception” or “belief” and “exaggeration” of racism. It’s the real existence of it. It is not a mass phenomenon, racists throughout Britain and most of Europe are a minority, but they exist, and alongisde there is a creeping paranoid, intolerant, patronising attitude which is promoted by a lot of the tabloids and by the degradation of political debate and the rhetoric of the war on terror.

That fundamentalist leaders may exploit this to attract more support for their views is *exactly* one of the “didactic” points of the film discussed in Chris’s post. It covers *that* angle too. When Yasmin’s brother ends up recruited by the jihadist preacher. There is no “excusing” that outcome in the film, the religious figure and his brainwashing tactics are portrayed very negatively; he is not a “product” of intolerance. He exploits the resentment against it. There’s a scene where Yasmin’s brother gets mad at his father for finding excuses for the police. “They pointed a fucking gun to my head and you stood there saying nothing. Your son, they could have killed me right there on the doorstep of your house, and you said nothing”, and the father walks away without saying a word. I thought it was one of the best bits, still stereotyped and simplified as most of the film is, but very telling. Understanding how something happens is not the same as excusing it or approving it. The film targets and denounces *both* the racism and police brutality from outside, *and* the fundamentalism (and mysoginy, and oppression, etc.) from within.

There’s also been other films and books treating this question in even more complex and subtler and interesting ways, but that is never going to stop anyone from rehashing the either/or line of thinking. As if, by the mere fact of denouncing racism, you are saying that the targets of racism should be immune not only from racism but from any kind of disagreement or criticism. No one here is saying that, certainly not the film. That is simply projection of a patronising attitude and binary thinking.

Concluding that, because fundamentalists exploit that resentment, there should be less concern for the racism and intolerance that feeds it, is counter-intuitive and insulting.

You or Mr Malik may be as well-intentioned as can be. But by dismissing concerns about Islamophobia, racism and police abuse, and implying that somehow they need to be qualified each time with “but of course we also need to denounce the fundamentalists and support-the-critics-from-within” (something, which, again the film does deal with anyway, and very clearly), as if one concern went to the detriment of the other and they couldn’t coexist, you are legitimising the very excuse from *bigoted people who couldn’t care less about Iranian feminists or Pakistani gays* and only use instances of mysoginy or gay-bashing to say, see, they’re all barbarians, raus. Do you even realise that? I know it’s a trend to blame all this thickness and hypocrisy on “the left” (does anyone ever question the monolithic projection in that definition, hm?), but the phrase “barking up the wrong tree” does not even begin to describe it.

Dsquared: ‘Dan (Simon), maybe it’s also because those other minorities were immigrant communities, whereas the black Americans were not.’

Dan ‘me ignorant?’ Simon:’Perhaps the reason was, indeed, that black Americans were less recent immigrants than the other groups I mentioned. Care to explain why you think this might have made a difference?’

The Dan Simon Award for Clownish Comments is, again, won by Dan Simon. Dan: it’s not simply that American blacks are (largely) a non-immigrant group. It’s not simply that American Blacks are (largely) less recent entrants to the American continent than other groups. It’s that they were, until the 1860s, largely *slaves* without control over their own lives and subject to the most vicious forms of social control, lack of property of their own, frequent family breakup etc; and that from the 1860s until the 1960s they were, throughout much of the United States *without Civil Rights, including the Right to vote*, which did rather have its impact on their wealth, health and social wellbeing. Immigrants, once naturalised, could vote, could own property and didn’t get anything like the same attention from the Klan (in the South) or racist city machines (in the North). Dan, this may- just possibly may- be the cause of one or two of the differences between the African-American community and various immigrant or post-immigrant American communities.

That was ‘American History for Ignoramuses and Cretins’, a public service broadcast for the benefit of Dan Simon.

But perhaps you can explain, Dan, why the fact that an explanatory consideration E fails to be a sufficient explanation of phenomenon P entails that it is “absurd” to invoke E as a component of the explanation for P?

Well, Chris, it is “absurd” to invoke E as a component of the explanation for P when E is very poorly correlated with P, but fairly well correlated with the phenomenon of people mistakenly invoking E as a component of the explanation for P. History’s terrorist groups represent (or claim to represent) at most a tiny fraction of the world’s discriminated-against groups, and a goodly number of groups that cannot plausibly be said to have been discriminated against at all. (How much discrimination were leftist students in Germany and Italy really subject to in the 1980’s, after all?)

Perhaps discrimination can, in some isolated cases, play a modest role in provoking terrorist violence, just as poverty may, in some isolated cases, play a modest role in provoking crime. But as even partial explanations, these are swamped by other factors, prominently including a cultural atmosphere that deflects culpability from criminals, or terrorists–as these attempted explanations undoubtedly do, however many caveats you add.

“How much discrimination were leftist students in Germany and Italy really subject to in the 1980’s, after all?”

You really are that clueless. First, who’s saying that terrorism is automagically and exclusively provoked by discrimination? You. Projection of obtuse binary thinking, part II. Secondly, what exactly are you referring to by the 1980’s in Germany and Italy? Far left and far right (conveniently forgot about that, hm?) terrorist groups in those countries were active in the late 60’s and 70’s. They weren’t students; they were generally older. Students were among those who as a result were occasionally subject to the climate of police repression and brutality on the one hand, and internal civil war between far left and far right on the other. Riots, violence, street fights, killings, shit like that. End of 70’s mostly.

So, you brought up the Black Panthers, now you’re ignorantly and confusedly referring to Italian and German terrorists in the wrong decade, point being?

What are you trying to do, draw up a comprehensive universal and timeless Theory of Terrorism?

Perhaps discrimination can, in some isolated cases, play a modest role in provoking terrorist violence, just as poverty may, in some isolated cases, play a modest role in provoking crime.

Perhaps social and political phenomena of a certain complexity cannot be reduced to that tiresome either/or paradigm. Perhaps it’s time to quit the straw man that somehow trying to understand and explain how certain social and political phenomena can arise and what factors can contribute to them equals absolving individuals or groups (terrorists, criminals) from any responsibility whatsoever. We’d have no need for social and historical analysis if it was like that. No one should even attempt to write books about, say, the mafia unless to fill them exclusively with the amazing revelation that the mafia is bad and, like, kills people. Otherwise the idiot masses might mistake analysis for approval. The Moral Police needs to be vigilant on the evil threat of the Root Cause argument, or else, the terrorists win.

Okay, Chris, that’s blunt enough even for me. Sorry about ‘problem,’ sorry about ‘popping up.’ Stupidly, I thought it was just participation in the discussion, and I thought I was civil about it; my mistake; won’t happen again.

It’s that they were, until the 1860s, largely slaves without control over their own lives and subject to the most vicious forms of social control, lack of property of their own, frequent family breakup etc; and that from the 1860s until the 1960s they were, throughout much of the United States without Civil Rights, including the Right to vote, which did rather have its impact on their wealth, health and social wellbeing.

All of this is true, but rather unconvincing as an explanation of why organized movements espousing terrorist violence against whites sprang up during the 1960’s–primarily in locales where slavery had never existed–and then died down about a decade later. Why then, and not before, and not later? Why primarily in the large cities of the North and West, and not in the South? And why American blacks, but not literally hundreds of other minority groups–in America and around the world–including some that were very badly treated, indeed? Simply put, this “explanation” explains precisely nothing.

Immigrants, once naturalised, could vote, could own property and didn’t get anything like the same attention from the Klan (in the South) or racist city machines (in the North).

This is, to put it mildly, a rather kind description of America’s treatment of its immigrant groups. For a particularly egregious case, you might want to look into the history of the treatment of Chinese immigrants in America.

Clownish Comments….Ignoramuses and Cretins…

I’m truly flattered. But when it comes to historically illiterate comments laced with lame attempts at humor, I cannot hold a candle to the Master.

So, you brought up the Black Panthers, now you’re ignorantly and confusedly referring to Italian and German terrorists in the wrong decade, point being?

…To drive a stake in the heart of the thesis that there’s a significant connection between terrorist movements and poor treatment of minority groups.

What are you trying to do, draw up a comprehensive universal and timeless Theory of Terrorism?

No, actually, I’m trying to debunk one.

Perhaps it’s time to quit the straw man that somehow trying to understand and explain how certain social and political phenomena can arise and what factors can contribute to them equals absolving individuals or groups (terrorists, criminals) from any responsibility whatsoever.

I agree. Some explainers, unfortunately, do adopt the “tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner” attitude. But they’re not compelled to.

The Moral Police needs to be vigilant on the evil threat of the Root Cause argument, or else, the terrorists win.

In fact, my assertion that discrimination against minorities has little to do with terrorism, but that the popularity of the “Root Cause” argument does seem to promote terrorism, is an entirely empirical one. I simply claim, as a practical matter, that (1) combatting discrimination against minority groups will have little effect on the incidence of terrorism, and (2) widespread embrace of the (false) “Root Cause” argument will encourage terrorism to blossom.

My moral position, as it happens, is that discrimination against minority groups should be combatted, for purely moral reasons, even if doing so has no practical effect on the incidence of terrorism. I also happen to believe that promulgating empirically mistaken explanations for terrorism is morally wrong–though probably in a milder class of wrongs than, say, unfair discrimination against minority groups.

Dan Simon: you’re a fool. Struggling through your thickets of tortured prose, I believe you to be saying that ‘Oppression is not a necessary cause of violent rebellion, though the lessening of oppression may be.’ This strikes me as both oxymoronic and historically inaccurate. Of course, it may not be your thesis. Your prose is pretty impenetrable- I would recommend that you buy and study Ernest Gowers’s ‘The Complete Plain Words’.

Now to your attempted criticisms:

Firstly, no-one offered slavery-plus-denial of Civil Rights as a sufficient cause of Black American violence. I can think of a number of explanations of the timing and locale of the violence, but none that excludes the issues of denial of civil rights and the legacy of slavery.

I would include, among the proximate causes of the unrest of the ’60s, the demographic explosion of the era and the consequent problems of increasing youth crime;
the return of alienated and trained soldiers from Vietnam;
the violent response by city machines (notably but not exclusively Daley’s in Chicago) to religious, non-violent protesters like Martin Luther King and the consequent discrediting among urban blacks of non-violent protest (hardly an exclusive list). These immediate pressures were felt across American society but acted with particular force on the societies of the Black sections of the inner cities, which had always had extremely high levels of violence, distrust of the law, and poverty; where policing, in contrast to most white areas, was conducted with extreme violence by cops who didn’t live in the area, and who in many cases hated blacks;
and which were now particularly vulnerable due to the overcrowding and increased competition for scarce housing caused by the influx of Southern rural blacks: all of these long-term factors being, of course, the heritage of slavery and the subsequent denial of rights to Blacks.

Dan ‘Krusty’ Simon, on other hand, did not make a single mention of slavery and civil rights until it was aggressivley
brought to his notice.

The ‘cities of the North and West’ point is a historically ignorant canard. Firstly, Black on white violence did erupt in a number of Southern cities throughout the 1960s and after: see especially Atlanta and Baltimore. Since you have mentioned the Black Panthers, they had ‘chapters’ in Memphis, New Orleans, Winston Salem (North Carolina), Dallas, and Houston. Oh, dear, Dan: do you feel like admitting that it is you who is ‘historically illiterate’?

Secondly, and most importantly, my post did not say that the egregious discrimination against blacks was limited to the South, and I explicitly mentioned the maltreatment of blacks throughout the US, not limited to the South, instancing the ‘city machines’- as Simon knows, since he quoted the relevant phrase. Dan, I know you’re dishonest, and you know you’re dishonest: doesn’t it all get a little embarrassing?

Thirdly, concerning the Black on White violence that did erupt in Northern and Western cities in the 1960s: as Simon would know if he had read as much as one reputable textbook of American history, the Black populations of American cities were massively swelled, and socially transformed, between 1932 and the late 1960s by huge influxes of Southern Blacks whose social behaviour and view of the world had largely been formed by their upbringing in the South.

Re immigrants:
Are you just saying that only the Chinese got treated anywhere near as badly as the Blacks, in which case- given that they were effectively evicted from the West Coast in the 19th Century, and that the Blacks were too large a community to be so treated, and had in any case nowhere to go- that is, I think, not something that can be cited in support of your thesis.

Or if you’re saying- your prose is too turgid and imprecise for me to be sure- that white immigrants actually got just as bad a deal as black slaves or ex-slaves, I’d like to know where the scholarly literature is that supports this false and dishonest assertion. Come on, Dan ‘Krusty the Clown’
Simon: I want references- names of books, authors, journal details. Not some crap on the web from Glenn Reynolds: I have access to
a number of university libraries, and if there’s a historical literature out there that says that Blacks were no worse treated than white immigrants in 19th or 20th Century America, I’ll be able to read it. Come on: put up or shut up.

I’m actually not convinced that earlier immigrant groups really were less militant. What about Irish-Americans in the 19th century? The Molly Maguires? The Ancient Order of Hibernians (before they morphed into a bunch of homophobic blowhards)? Bishop Hughes’s threat to turn New York into “a second Moscow” if a single Catholic person or institution was attacked by nativists? The Fenian invasion of Canada? A lot of this seems goofy or insignificant now, but it didn’t at the time.

Interesting case. I frankly know very little about the violent Irish-American movements of the nineteenth century. I’d be very interested to hear hypotheses regarding their social causes.

By now, though, it should be utterly obvious that “the Irish were cruelly discriminated against” does not constitute a plausible social cause. Yes, the Irish were cruelly discriminated against in America at the time. But numerous groups were also discriminated against just as cruelly during the same period, without forming terrorist movements, while numerous violent movements sprang up that could not possibly have had discrimination as a justification. (Perhaps the most famous had a lot of K’s in the name, as I recall.)

In what’s supposed to be a blog by social science academics, the degree of acceptance of a thesis that has absolutely no empirical justification, on what appear to be sentimental or aesthetic grounds, is just stunning. And it’s getting in the way of interesting discussion of an important social and political question. Why am I the only person here who seems the slightest bit concerned?

the only “thesis that has absolutely no empirical justification” being presented around here is your claim that “the number of armed conflicts involving [oppressed] minorities is very few indeed.”

You edited out a very important bit–the part at the beginning where I said, “as a percentage of the total number of ethnic or racial minorities in the world undergoing routine discrimination or harassment”. I believe that with that qualifier included, the thesis is utterly unassailable. Pointing to anecdotal examples–even numerous anecdotal examples–of minority groups facing discrimination or repression who have also spawned violent chauvinist movements, and thus claiming a correlation, is no more convincing than pointing to numerous anecdotal examples of minority groups with predominantly type A blood, who have also formed violent chauvinist movements, and then claiming a correlation.

If you want to explore such questions you might usefully ask why some natives settled peacefully on reservations while others went on the warpath. I suspect the answer is simply that some saw that resistance was futile while others did not.

This is another interesting and useful question, and your proposed answer is definitely worth considering. Notice, however, that at its heart it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with oppression, discrimination, or cruel treatment. It simply claims that groups that perceive (perhaps through experience) that violence is an effective political tool will be more inclined to form violent political movements. As I’ve already pointed out, plenty of groups that could not remotely have been said to have been victims of majority discrimination or mistreatment have nevertheless formed violent political movements–presumably because they considered it effective to do so.

I would add only that one way a minority group can come to perceive violence as a potentially fruitful path is by seeing the majority attribute violence by minority groups to mistreatment, and then respond by redoubling its efforts to redress the violent minority group’s grievances.

Dan, let me know when you have worked out the “total number of ethnic or racial minorities in the world.” If you have no way to calculate that figure then certainly your thesis is “utterly unassailable.” The reason why social scientists don’t share your interest in arguments of that sort is pretty well known. I assumed that somewhere amid your verbiage there was an operational hypothesis. My bad.

Certainly a work of art which portrays grievances in a sympathetic light may promote unrest. Rulers have always worried about this. Many a culture has insisted that every flouting of the law should be presented as nothing more nor less than a “shameful descent into monstrous criminality” without regard to the circumstances which provoked it. But if you want to promote that righteous outlook it isn’t Channel Four you should be worrying about. The American Declaration of Independence is a catalogue of excuses for a violent attack on lawful authority by a discontented minority which, all things considered, had really very little to complain about.

If you want to cite that last remark as a vindication of your claim that minorities don’t resort to violence simply and solely because they are oppressed, feel free. I never said they do, nor did anyone else in this thread. Why don’t you go the whole hog and post the viewpoint you wish to attack, sign it S. T. Rawman, and proceed to demolish it? But in fairness to our hosts, you might do it on your own blog.

Compare:

“Of the children who catch infectious disease X, very very few indeed die.”

Therefore

“Infectious disease X could not be responsible for the death of this child”.

Well, in the absence of all other information about this disease and this child, I’d say this is actually a pretty good inference. Of course, if we further know that this disease occasionally causes high fever, and that high fever occasionally causes death, and that this child experienced high fever, then we can revise our hypothesis accordingly. On the other hand, if we know that this child had no signs of high fever, but did experience severe head trauma unrelated to the illness, then we might well stick with our original guess.

Now I won’t bore everyone with a history of terrorist movements, but I believe that if you investigate them, you’ll find that precious few of them followed the path, “oppressed minority leads to general restlessness among minority members, which leads to spontaneous formation of terrorist movement.” In fact, a hefty percentage of them cannot be said to have originated with an oppressed minority at all.

However, the etiology “enterprising radical leader spots opportunity to gain notoriety and power by killing people, embarks on a terrorist campaign” is a very common story indeed. Sometimes the power is obtained through the support of members of a minority group that considers itself oppressed. Sometimes it’s gleaned from a majority group that sees a minority group, or foreign nation, or a political faction within itself, as a threat. And sometimes it’s gleaned from a majority group on behalf of the minority group that the leader claims to be representing.

Of the three, I’d estimate that the first is the rarest and least effective source of support. In fact, terrorist groups that claim to represent oppressed minority groups are often despised by a vast majority of that group’s members, and even act as conventional criminal organizations preying on the group they purport to defend.

Of course, I haven’t cited any hard data here–although I believe the terrorism research will back me up–and if Chris or anyone else wants to come back with a similarly detailed analysis of the claimed minority oppression-terrorism link, I’m ready to listen. However, “everybody knows” doesn’t constitute an argument–nor does a compelling BBC television drama.

“Now I won’t bore everyone with a history of terrorist movements”

That’s a pity, I was looking forward to that. It would have been so accurate. I was so curious to hear in which decade you’d have placed the Baader-Meinhof or the FARC. 30’s? 90’s? somewhere in the future? There is, after all, among historians, substantial disagremeent on that too.

For those who missed it, set your VCR’s, it’s on again tonight at 0215 on Channel 4.

Little by little, Dan Simon is coming around to the view Chris put forward:

“[The] basic message: that unremitting hostility to a community will not lead them to abandon their most reactionary traditions in favour of modernity but will rather have the opposite effect, is a valid one.”

The reactionary traditions may come from Donegal or Sicily or Pakistan. It is not asserted that they must be terrorist traditions; merely that under the pressure of hostility the wagons will form a circle.

Now whether this theory has much general validity I don’t know, but it is much more interesting than Dan’s “Root Cause” argument, which he hates with a passion despite the fact that it is his very own baby.

Little by little, Dan Simon is coming around to the view Chris put forward:

“[The] basic message: that unremitting hostility to a community will not lead them to abandon their most reactionary traditions in favour of modernity but will rather have the opposite effect, is a valid one.”

Uh, no, I’ve been arguing quite consistently that society’s “unremitting hostility to a community” has very little impact on the latter’s formation of violent movements. Other influences–including, but not limited to, the community’s past traditions–have a much greater effect.

(I’ve also suggested that another influence–a sympathetic response to the community’s violence–sometimes plays an important role. That point has gotten lost a bit in the more historically-oriented discussions, because I believe that it was until recently very rare for people to romanticize the terrorist killers within their own society. But that doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned the claim.)

Here’s a possible historical reason why there might be a few problems in the black family as an institution; I’ve got the surname “Davies” because I had a great-great grandfather who had the surname “Davies”. How many black Americans can make a similar claim?

This is way off-topic, but I figure since a CT poster is initiating it….

Legacies of slavery might explain, say, a black illegitimacy rate of 18 percent in 1950 (as compared with 2 percent for whites). However, it’s much worse at explaining the rough quadrupling of this rate to 69 percent by 1997. (The white rate crossed 18 percent in 1980, and has since leveled off at a little over half the black rate.)

Marriage and divorce rates show a similar pattern: around the middle of the 20th century, family cohesion statistics that are until then only marginally worse among whites than among blacks suddenly become epidemic problems among blacks (and a much milder problem for whites). Explaining how the effects of slavery could have “reached out” across a half-century period to devastate black families seems like a difficult job.

One thing I found odd about Yasmin’s turn to “orthodoxy” that has not been brought out in the comments so far is that it seemed like she was engaging in a bit of identity politics. What’s odd is that fundamentalist Islam and identity politics seem like strange bedfellows–even if some pursue identity politics by adopting the trappings of fundamentalist Islam.

Antoni, perhaps you are right, but somehow I feel there is a big difference in motivation and perhaps in substance between someone’s faith in a fundamentalist version of Islam where that person was raised in that tradition and where a person adopts that faith as a reaction to felt oppression. There is at least this much difference: the former need not involve resentment in the way the latter does. If I am right in suspecting a difference in substance as well as motivation, then radical Islam as identity politics is, ironically, an expression of modernity even as it is a reaction to it.

And yes, the name is sephardi.